


the best of you

by alderations



Series: Whumptober/Mechtober 2020 [1]
Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Angst, Captivity, Chains, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks, Rescue, Reunions, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:20:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26766427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alderations/pseuds/alderations
Summary: “I know Aurora!” She fights her way to her knees, yanking her wrists away from the shackles as if she can break them off on her own. “Th-this has never happened before. Something is wrong, I have to get to her! I—I have t-to—I can’t… Jonny, get me out of here!”(Whumptober Day 1: waking up restrained/shackled; Mechtober Day 1-3: Aurora)
Relationships: The Aurora/Nastya Rasputina
Series: Whumptober/Mechtober 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1950916
Comments: 11
Kudos: 101
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	the best of you

“Fucking shackles, I  _ swear,  _ this is just lazy! As soon as I bust a hole in these damn things…”

Nastya’s eyes open with a start. On her left, Jonny’s voice rambles on, cursing everything in sight with all the vitriol he spews on a daily basis; on her right, Ashes sighs to themself and ignores Jonny with all the patience they can muster. That’s not saying much, since they usually would’ve set him on fire by now, but when Nastya finally picks up her head to look around, they’re both shackled to the wall, same as her.

Okay. Not an ideal situation, but one they’ve been in dozens of times before. “What’s going on?” she croaks, looking to Ashes and ignoring Jonny’s indignant huff when she refuses to acknowledge his authority.

“What it looks like,” Ashes replies. “Some fucker got the jump on us, knocked the three of us out and chained us up here. Not sure where we are. And Jonny’s not helping.”

Jonny scoffs. “I’m intimidating our captors with my unbreakable spirit, thank you very much.”

Nastya continues to ignore him, instead leaning toward Ashes and stopping short when she feels cold iron cuffs tugging at her wrists. Her hands are chained over her head, attached to the wall—very medieval dungeon vibes, not particularly creative. “And the others?”

“Dunno. I think TS managed to, y’know, play dead. Otherwise… they were well-prepared to take us down.”

Struggling to remember what happened in the moments before their capture, Nastya closes her eyes and forces herself to breathe deeply. She was on the bridge with Brian, both of them bent over the meaningless readouts from Aurora’s external sensors, and they had been arguing over some heat signature or another and then… nothing. And now she’s hanging from a wall. “What about Aurora?”

“Again. Dunno.” Ashes looks up and meets her eyes, and their face softens in sympathy when they realize that Nastya is about to panic. “She can handle herself, just like we can. It’s going to be okay, Nastya.”

Logically, Nastya agrees. But something else is clawing at the back of her throat, flooding her with fear; something is drastically wrong and when it clicks, Nastya can no longer stifle the terror threatening to overwhelm her. “I can’t feel her, Ashes,” she whispers. “Sh-she’s not there. I c-can’t—she—this n-never happens, even if she’s  _ furious  _ with me, she’s al-always there, I c-can’t—Ash—”

“Nastya,” Jonny cuts her off. She whips around to look at him, eyes already welling with tears. “Breathe. They could have all kinds of technology to block you off from her, without hurting her. Right?” Ashes must be staring at him in utter bewilderment, because he hunches his shoulders and snaps back at them. “What? We’re not gonna get out of here any quicker if we’re all worked up.”

“Usually you’re the one doing the working, is all,” Ashes grumbles.

Between them, Nastya barely registers their words over the rushing of mercury in her ears. Her face feels hot, which it doesn’t usually  _ do,  _ and her chest burns like she swallowed something toxic. “Th-th-there shouldn’t b-be a way to b-block her from m-me.”

“As far as  _ you  _ know,” corrects Ashes.

“I know Aurora!” She fights her way to her knees, yanking her wrists away from the shackles as if she can break them off on her own. “Th-this has never happened before. Something is  _ wrong,  _ I have to  _ get  _ to her! I—I have t-to—I can’t… Jonny, get me  _ out  _ of here!”

He’s on his knees now too, not that it helps either of them. “I don’t know what to tell you, Nastya! I’ve been trying to get out of here for hours.”

At that moment, something clunks outside the door to the cell they’re in, and then it slides open with a horrible screech of metal on stone. It’s alarming, frankly, that their captors use this kind of holding cell and yet somehow have the technology to cut Aurora off from Nastya. The creature that slides into the cell is only vaguely humanoid, with five limbs and eyes in their chest and no apparent mouth—not particularly weird, compared to some of the people the Mechanisms have met. Or murdered. They share a common language, at least. “Mechanisms, crew of the space pirate ship Aurora.”

Jonny scowls up at them. “That’s us.”

“You are wanted in an uncountable number of systems for an uncountable number of crimes.”

“No shit,” Ashes deadpans.

The creature glares at them, but doesn’t acknowledge their words. “You are being held here while we determine the actual worth of your heads and find the highest—is she quite alright?”

They’re looking at Nastya, body hunched in some attempt at concern. “No, she’s not,” Jonny snaps, knowing full well that their captor doesn’t care and wishing, secretly, that he could do  _ anything  _ to help Nastya. “Nas. C’mon, you need to pull it together.” In most situations, Jonny would never say something like that, but he’s afraid that her panicking will give up even more information that could be used to hurt them.

“C-c-can’t—I c-can’t feel Aurora,” she cries. She’s thrashing so hard against the chains now that quicksilver drips down her forearms and stains her skin. “I can’t, Jonny. I can’t, I can’t, I  _ can’t,  _ I can’t.”

So telling her to calm down is not going to work. No surprise there. Ashes tries to move closer to her, but can’t get near enough to touch. “Nastya,  _ please.” _

“What is she freaking out about?” their captor repeats, looking more agitated now.

Jonny bites his lip. Maybe they’ll have an answer to why Nastya can’t feel what Aurora feels anymore, but they’re just as likely to say something even more harmful, and he doesn’t particularly want their captors knowing that their starship is both sentient and semi-organic. “She has a… cybernetic connection to our ship. And if anything were to  _ break  _ that connection,” he grits his teeth, “it would be an issue.” He lets the threat in that statement imply itself.

Their captor narrows their eyes and looks back at Nastya. “Your ship is impounded nearby, not that it matters to you anymore. Like I said, you’ll all be put to death as soon as we determine the best buyer for your heads. Or… disemboweled remains, or whatever else. I’m not sure  _ how  _ a ship could have a ‘cybernetic connection’ to a human, but we put a restraining bolt on it in case that robot got any ideas.”

Ashes frowns. “Robot…?”

“Yes. The… golden one. It looked to be broken, but that’s none of your business.”

While they continue to rant about the charges being brought upon the Mechanisms, Jonny and Ashes make eye contact over Nastya’s shaking form. Brian being ‘broken’ means that he’s either regenerating or… pretending, maybe? That’s a lot of forethought, even for an EjM Brian, but it’s not impossible. “Alright, hold on, shut up for a second. What do you mean, the robot was broken?”

“I  _ said _ it’s none of your business,” their captor repeats with a sigh.

Jonny scowls. “Look, arsehole, you seem to be missing a  _ number  _ of important facts about us, the first being that more or less everything is our business. We make a living out of sticking our noses everywhere and writing songs about it. Second—oh.”

Before he can finish, the creature slumps to the ground with a gnarly bullet wound in the back of their head, and Brian steps over their body. “Were you about to get sentimental on me, Jonny?”

“Never in a million years. Get me out of here.”

Instead of doing as he says, Brian rushes toward Nastya instead, steadying her one hand on her shoulder and the other cupping her face. “Nastya. Nastya, she’s okay, I promise. I got the restraining bolt off without a problem, she just had to reboot some of her systems, okay? You’ll reconnect as soon as we get back to her. Nastya, can you hear me?”

Her panicked sobs appear to morph into  _ relieved  _ sobs, though that’s not enough for Brian, who breaks her shackles with disturbing ease and gathers her into his arms. “I c-can’t f-feel her,” she mumbles once again, pressing her face into Brian’s shoulder. “She’s g-gone, Brian. I’m—it’s so—I’m  _ empty.” _

The sheer heartbreak on Brian’s face is enough to make Jonny nauseous. “Alright, can we just hurry back to the ship before Nastya loses it?”

“Shush,” Brian chastises him. Still, he digs into one pocket and pulls out a plasma knife, which he tosses into Jonny’s open hands. It takes all of two minutes for Jonny to free himself and Ashes, all while Brian continues to pat Nastya’s back and examine the weeping wounds on her wrists. “The others are down the hall to the left. I’m going to take Nastya back to the Aurora now.”

Ashes rolls their eyes. “The  _ others  _ can get themselves out.”

“Yes, but this will be faster.” Leaving no room for an argument, Brian stands and pulls Nastya up with an arm around her back, then guides her back in the direction of the ship. He doesn’t bother to look back and see whether Ashes and Jonny actually do as he says, but he hears their footsteps take off in the opposite direction, which is a good sign.

Nastya trembles the entire way back to Aurora, her body cold and rigid against Brian’s side. “Did… did they hurt you?” she manages after a minute.

Her coherency calms Brian down a bit, though he doesn’t loosen his grip on her side. “Nope. I just, uh, stood  _ really  _ still. They’re not that tech-savvy here.”

“B-but they still—they still hurt Aurora.”

“Restraining bolts aren’t that advanced,” Brian reassures her. “That’s part of why she had to reboot, actually. It was too simplistic to just restrict her communications; it just shut her off entirely.”

This wasn’t as comforting as Brian hoped, because Nastya bites her lip and shudders next to him. “Are we almost there?”

“Yeah. Just around the corner.”

As soon as Nastya lays eyes on Aurora, she breaks away from Brian and sprints toward the ship as fast as her unsteady legs will take her. The ramp is still down from when Brian left, assuming that the Toy Soldier would be able to handle any would-be intruders. Aurora lets out a blast of sound that’s somehow both mournful and jubilant as soon as Nastya crosses the threshold, and then Nastya falls to her knees, face bent against the wall, hands seeking out every rumble and hiss of Aurora’s living systems.  _ “Aurora,”  _ she finally gasps, after swallowing down a few more sobs.

**Nastya. Nastya. Nastya. Nastya.**

The rest of the crew come careening down the hallway, moving much faster than Brian and Nastya had, and he ushers them onto the ship and around Nastya’s crouched form to give her as much space as possible, given that she picked a bad spot to collapse into her girlfriend’s metaphorical arms. “We need to get out of here, Aurora,” he calls. “I’m heading for the bridge. Will you two… be okay?”

**Yes. I will be with you in a moment, Pilot Drumbot.**

He leaves with the rest of the crew, hesitating at first until he sees a handful of cables reach out from the walls to wrap Nastya in their embrace. Once they’re left alone again, Aurora’s voice turns soft and almost tremulous in a way that she would never show anyone but Nastya.

**You’re bleeding, Nastya.**

“I-I know,” Nastya mumbles. “It’s healing. It’s fine. I thought—I thought you were gone, Aurora.”

**I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Nastya. Nastya. Nastya.**

She tangles her fingers with the cables currently wiping the mercury from her wrists. “Don’t apologize, love. It’s not your fault.”

**I know. I love you. Nastya.**

“Love you too, Aurora. Now go talk to Brian before he gets upset.”

**Author's Note:**

> slides in hhhhhHELLO FOLKS IT'S OCTOBER! I'm doin' it! I'm combining Whumptober and Mechtober because, uh, I'm a masochist and these prompts are JUICY. Get fuckin' ready.
> 
> a note on this one: I don't want to imply that Nastya is weak or dependent in any way by having her break down in this situation. I have a LOT of ideas about Nastya and independence given her backstory, but I think given that she and Aurora are literally symbiotic, it would be extremely scary for her to suddenly Not Feel Aurora In Her Brain. that's my take. also im projecting.
> 
> anyway. find me on tumblr @alderations, and look forward to more! And comment, if you feel so inclined. ;3c


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